Joe Exotic says he was ‘too innocent and too gay to deserve a pardon’ from Donald Trump

Joe Exotic had the whole scene perfectly staged.

A Dodge truck limousine was parked outside of his lawyer’s office in Fort Worth, Texas on Inauguration Day, as his community of supporters – better known as “Team Tiger” – awaited word of a last-minute pardon from President Donald Trump.

But that pardon never came.

Clearly frustrated by the decision, Joe Exotic slammed the president and his family on Instagram following the Inauguration Day ceremonies.

“I was too innocent and too GAY to deserve a Pardon from Trump,” he wrote in a caption of a photo posted to Instagram that showed him next to a tiger. “I only mattered to Don Jr. when he needed to make a comment about me to boost his social media post.”

He added: “Boy were we all stupid to believe he actually stood for Equal Justice? His corrupt friends all come first.”

Just before the former president left office on Wednesday, he granted clemency to 143 people in a late-night pardoning spree, letting loyalists like Stephen Bannon and celebrities like rapper Lil Wayne off the hook for a range of federal charges.

He did not, however, issue a pardon for Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, the convicted felon and former zoo operator known as ‘Joe Exotic’ who became a national media sensation following the Netflix release of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.

The American true-crime documentary – released in its entirety at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic – was a smash hit, providing the star of the show with a global following, including more than 400,000 followers on Instagram.

Joe Exotic has used that platform from behind bars to push for his release, arguing he should be cleared of his 22-year sentence in federal prison for an attempted murder plot to kill Carole Baskin, the CEO of Big Cat Rescue and his arch rival, who also performed on Dancing With the Stars last year after the release of the Netflix series.

In addition to the two attempted murder charges, Maldonado-Passage was also convicted on 17 federal counts of animal abuse.

The FBI said in a January 2020 statement after charging the newfound celebrity: “Today's sentencing of Joseph Maldonado-Passage should serve as a reminder that the FBI and our law enforcement partners will not tolerate those who orchestrate murder-for-hire or violate US wildlife laws.”

For months, those surrounding Joe Exotic were claiming in media interviews that they were confident he would receive a pardon from the president in his final days in office.

His lawyers filed a pardon application in September that claimed their client had been “railroaded and betrayed” by his apparent enemies, the Associated Press reported, and that “he will likely die in prison” due to health complications.

Some members of the first family appeared to respond to those efforts, with Donald Trump Jr. saying in an interview on SiriusXM Radio he believed the charges were “aggressive” against Joe Exotic – although he acknowledged  he didn’t know “exactly what he was charged with”.

“I watched the show, but it was like, I don’t know exactly what he was guilty of or wasn’t,” the former first son reportedly said in the interview.  "It doesn’t seem like he was totally innocent of anything. But when they’re saying, ‘We’re putting this guy away for 30 years,' I’m saying that seems sort of aggressive."

Mr Trump also retweeted a post from Florida Republican Matt Gaetz urging him to “pardon everyone from himself to his administration officials, to Joe Exotic if he has to” in a November tweet.

But as the clock struck noon on Wednesday, there was a new president sworn into the Oval Office – and exactly zero pardons for Joe Exotic.